Sunday, July 23, 2017

"The EU is a neoliberal project..."

Brexit affords the British left a historic opportunity for a decisive break with EU market liberalism.

By Joe Guinan and Thomas M Hanna

The Brexit vote to leave the European Union has many parents, but
"Lexit" – the argument for exiting the EU from the left – remains an
orphan. A third of Labour voters backed Leave, but they did so without
any significant leadership from the Labour Party. Left-of-centre votes
proved decisive in determining the outcome of a referendum that was
otherwise framed, shaped, and presented almost exclusively by the right.
A proper left discussion of the issues has been, if not entirely
absent, then decidedly marginal – part of a more general malaise when it
comes to developing left alternatives that has begun to be corrected
only recently, under Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell.
Ceding Brexit to the right was very nearly the most serious strategic
mistake by the British left since the ‘70s. Under successive leaders
Labour became so incorporated into the ideology of Europeanism as to
preclude any clear-eyed critical analysis of the actually existing EU as
a regulatory and trade regime pursuing deep economic integration. The
same political journey that carried Labour into its technocratic embrace
of the EU also resulted in the abandonment of any form of distinctive
economics separate from the orthodoxies of market liberalism.
It’s been astounding to witness so many left-wingers, in meltdown over
Brexit, resort to parroting liberal economics. Thus we hear that factor
mobility isn’t about labour arbitrage, that public services aren’t under
pressure, that we must prioritise foreign direct investment and trade.
It’s little wonder Labour became so detached from its base. Such claims
do not match the lived experience of ordinary people in regions of the
country devastated by deindustrialisation and disinvestment.
Nor should concerns about wage stagnation and bargaining power be met
with finger-wagging accusations of racism, as if the manner in which
capitalism pits workers against each other hasn’t long been understood.
Instead, we should be offering real solutions – including a willingness
to rethink capital mobility and trade. This places us in direct conflict
with the constitutionalised neoliberalism of the EU. ...

About Me

As a kid I liked numbers and the sound of strings. I considered studying engineering but chose social sciences because of my interest in people. I combine a theoretical interest with a practical, social approach which brought me to the sphere of policy research. I am interested in reducing the disparity between poor and rich, between the powerful and the less powerful.
In 1973 and 1982 I lived in Latin America. In the mid-1980s, I was able to create an international forum to discuss the functioning of the international monetary system and the debt crisis, the Forum on Debt and Development (FONDAD). I established it with the view that the debt crisis of the 1980s was a symptom of a malfunctioning, flawed global monetary and financial system.
I was one of the driving forces behind the creation of the European Network on Debt and Development that was established at the end of the 1980s to help put pressure on European policymakers.
In 1990, before the beginning of the Gulf War, I cofounded the Golfgroep, a discussion group about international politics comprising journalists, scientists, politicians and activists that meets regularly.
The website of FONDAD is www.fondad.org